


The Light at the End of the Tunnel

by BeefFilledShark



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Punk, Alternate universe - Streamer, Band Fic, Beta Concept Art Amity Blight and Beta Concept Art Luz Noceda, F/F, Fluff and Angst, I only have sibling au brainrot, I will be adding on more tags when I finally remember, Lumelia, Please read the note at the beginning, Sibling AU, Sister-Sister Relationship, its terminal, thank you so much swiss sides
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29650692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeefFilledShark/pseuds/BeefFilledShark
Summary: Lucía Noceda wasn't expecting boredom to be her most constant companion when she permanently moved to the Boiling Isles, even less so when she brought her little sister along for the summer. Instead of adventure and mystery, she was stuck handling Eda's stand to pay for food and a roof over their heads while her old teacher was running around and exploring the human realm. So what else would she do other than to turn to music as a way to stave off that dreaded tedium, whether it be practicing the guitar and ukelele or listening to her favorite punk bands of the Boiling Isles? One thing is for certain, you never expect to meet your heroes.Rated T for some explicit language and violence.Original Sibling au from swiss.sides on Instagram, please check them out.
Relationships: Amelia Blight/Lucia Noceda, Amity Blight/Luz Noceda, Eda Clawthorne/Camila Noceda
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	The Light at the End of the Tunnel

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! I have not written for a fandom in an awfully long time but The Owl House has taken up a large part of my brain for some time now. This au has been heavily inspired by swiss.sides' (instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swiss.sides/) sibling au! Please check out their amazing art, it's really good. Nearly everything in this fic was talked about in a discord groupchat with some friends but I'm sure I'm subconsciously stealing ideas from other TOH artists on Instagram and Twitter so please let me know if I am.
> 
> Other than that, I rarely post most of the things I write so any and all feedback is greatly appreciated! I do have a beta reader but anything to improve people's experience is beyond welcome. In any case, thank you and I hope you enjoy!
> 
> -Kirbs
> 
> (Important side note, I've heard that there is another band au TOH fic on ao3 that's really popular. I haven't read a word of it so if there are any similarities in plot or characterization, it is purely coincidental. Thank you!)

Lucía felt like a busker. Sitting against the stone wall with a guitar in her lap, mindlessly strumming at the strings trying to perfectly tune each individual one, it didn’t matter if it was impossible. It was just something to help thoughtlessly pass the day by behind the stand of “Human Collectibles” as Eda had put it when they first met.

If they were back in the human world, you’d probably have to pay people to take the items that were assembled before the pedestrians. Yeah, it was a scam, selling a toothbrush as a weapon of a forgotten human king or a broken clock that would count down the seconds to your death, which was honestly quite macabre at the time, but it was a profitable scam, or at least it was.

Peddling phony items had been weighing on Lucía’s mind for a while and just recently had she started advertising everything for what they really were: a toothbrush for dental hygiene, a clock that was right twice a day, just normal human things people had never seen before. It didn’t take to say the least and now they were underselling and with the monthly tax day looming on the horizon, she just wanted to jump back through the portal and run home to her mother.

A chortle of laughter snapped Lucía out of her mind and back to the reality of Bonesborough’s streets. Luz sat atop a stool as she wrestled with King in her lap, trying to tickle him as he struggled to squirm out of her grasp, groaning his usual fruitless commands for fealty and pleas of mercy.

Lucía smiled. _At least some things pass the time better than others,_ she thought to herself. She brushed her calloused fingers across the guitar again. This time the A string was a bit too tight. As she reached to loosen it, Luz shouted as she dropped off the stool, throwing King off her lap with a yelp, “HEY, GET BACK HERE JERK!”

Lucía jumped to her feet, resting the guitar against the wall before instinctively grabbing her crimson bat and taking in her surroundings. A short, cloaked form was running away from the stand and down the street, throwing glances behind them before disappearing into the rush hour of demonic traffic.

Luz groused “they swiped something from off the table, I didn-“ Lucía was already sprinting after the thief, calling back to Luz “watch the stall! I’ll be back soon,” before plunging into the sea of demons and witches herself.

Squeezing around cyclopes, beholders, and demons of all kinds, Lucía saw a small blur of black cloak slip into a nearby alleyway. She leapt out of the mass of traffic and broke off into a sprint again as her smudged and stained converse slapped the small puddles of alleyway runoff.

The figure began to slow down as they threw another glance behind them. Their glowing red eyes widened in fear as they tried to pick up their pace again, nearly tripping on an upturned portion of cobblestone. Catching themselves on a pallet resting against the wall, the figure pulled it to the ground, obstructing the path before Lucía as they continued down the alleyway in a much more desperate looking run.

She vaulted over the pallet almost effortlessly, causing the cloak to try again with a garbage can that she treated with even less of a struggle than before. Realizing their pursuer was still unabated, the figure stopped behind a massive, shattered bone reposed against the wall. They began trying to pull it down, looking as though they’d nearly lift themselves off the ground before it began to tilt and fall.

She cursed to herself quietly, realizing what she’d have to do to catch up to the thief. The bone shattered even further as it slammed into the opposing wall at a shallow angle to the ground. A bit too high to vault over again, Lucía dove headfirst beneath the bone and into a mouthful of alley water, causing her to gag almost immediately.

Her hand grasped the figure's foot and pulling with all her might, they plummeted to join her on the sodden ground. Using her bat to help her up, she watched the individual writhe slightly, realizing she must have knocked the wind out of them.

Once on her feet, she tried wiping the street water off her lips with her soaked sleeve, gaining no respite from the rancid mixture. A burst of frustration caused her to slam the bat into the bone, this was NOT how her day was supposed to go. In the process, however, she inadvertently activated a glyph that had been pasted on like a preschooler’s art project. The barrel erupted in a ravenous gout of fire, giving Lucía an idea.

She leveled the bat towards the shoplifter who miraculously became much more cognizant with an ignited weapon immediately in front of them. They panickily tried to crawl away before their back hit the wall. Realizing they had nowhere to go, they desperately raised their hands in panic.

Lucía’s voice was a low growl, mimicking the subdued crackle of her bat, “whatever you took, I want it back.” There was a moment of hesitation from the individual, their fearful red eyes were the only thing visible beneath the cowl and they spoke more words than Lucía needed to hear. “NOW!” she spat, inching the burning weapon closer.

As they threw the clothing iron from beneath the layers of cloak and into the puddle Lucía was standing in, she lowered her hand slightly, illuminating the dim face beneath the cowl as they instinctively recoiled. Their features were round and soft with a dull pink scar cutting across their chin. Their eyes echoed the color of her own bat, silently pleading, obviously on the course to tears. Suddenly, she realized why they were so much shorter than her.

“Mierda! You’re just a kid!” It was a ferocious gut punch that almost sent her physically recoiling. She wavered for a moment, unmoving as she processed what she was doing. Dropping her weapon into the shallow puddle to extinguish the flames, she lowered herself, squatting down in front of the kid who looked like they were silently wishing to phase into the wall behind them.

She tried to make her voice as soft as she could, nearly a whisper, “Ok, look. I’m sorry I chased you but you’re lucky you only took from us. Everything on that table is trash but if you stole from someone else, they could’ve hurt you real bad.”

The kid’s eyes darted to the submerged bat and back to her. She pushed it a bit further away before reaching into her pocket. They put up their quaking hands again, wordlessly begging to not be hurt. Lucía put up her own in hopes of assuaging their fears.

She gripped the few snails in her pocket and placed them on the ground in front of her before continuing, “alright. I’m not gonna hurt you. Here’s some money so you don’t have to try and sell that piece of junk,” she backed off a bit further down the alley to let the kid out the way they came, raising her hands once more to show she wasn’t planning on doing anything before they leave.

Frantically, they bolted from the wall and shot beneath the monstrous bone before running into the bustling street. Lucía looked down at the untouched coins sitting in the alley as the receding footsteps stamped through the puddles dotting the path. It wasn’t more than ten snails.

Lucía felt numb as she scooped up the change and picked up her bat, shaking it off as she ducked beneath the shattered bone. There was no point in bringing back that clothing iron now. It was probably broken when they picked it up and there was no point in trying to sell it waterlogged now.

She felt like she couldn’t breathe. What the hell was she doing? Chasing a kid through the streets and threatening them over a broken piece of crap? What the hell would her own mother think of her had she saw this? What would she have done if they didn’t give it up?

The taste of alley water pushed these thoughts out of her mind momentarily. If the kid wasn’t going to use these snails, she might as well _._ Deciding to take the long way back to the stand, Lucía turned left, heading further down the street.

Still uncomfortably soaked in Bonesborough’s runoff, Lucía navigated through a couple of thoroughfares before coming upon Morrigan’s, a small pub that would have most closely resembled a dive bar back in the human realm. She pulled the door open, ringing the small bell above but receiving no attention upon her arrival.

The room before her was utterly packed with bodies of patrons and employees alike. Rock adjacent music blasted from the horrific jukebox like a chorus of dozens of shrieking wretches. It seemed like dozens of voices fought for the title of “loudest dick in the room” amidst the laughter of the bar and shouts of victory and cries of defeat near the lagoon tables. It was a complete debacle that Lucía was in absolutely no mood for right now.

Taking a deep breath and steeling herself, she cut a straight path to the corner of the bar with a minifridge stocked full of variously colored glass bottles. Removing one labeled “Fearberry,” she flagged down the cephalopod bartender who’d just finished pouring out a drink for another patron.

As he slid down to her, she wordlessly placed the bottle and a five-snail coin on the counter. Grasping the glass in a tentacle and the coin in another, he wrenched the cap off using the edge of the bar before returning it and Lucía’s change.

His voice seemed to boom despite the din of the establishment, obviously accustomed to this bedlam, “man, did’ja crawl through the street to get here? You look terrible.” Lucía snatched the opened bottle and pocketed the change, storming out of the boisterous pub without a word and onto the relatively peaceful clamor of rush hour.

Lucía was beyond happy to finally rid the awful taste of the chalky street from her mouth in favor of the bubbly sweetness of “Mr. Jitter’s Fearberry Soda!” When she first found this drink, she had scoffed at the corny label plastered around the surprisingly unsettling shadowy figure that passed as their logo. However, after a couple of sips, she realized it was reminiscent of a particular guava soda from her childhood. It’s been her stalwart drink ever since.

By the time Lucía made it back to the street corner she’d started on, she knocked back the rest of the pink, bubbly liquid and tossed the empty bottle into a pile of garbage nearby. However, as she approached the now barren stand, a mixture of fear and curiosity was lit aflame within her stomach.

Jogging up to her little sister, who seemed gleefully unaware of the near-empty stand, Lucía struggled to find the right words, “Luz! What the h-… what happened! What the f-”

Before she had a chance to finish that sentence, Luz seemed to burst with her all too familiar cheerfulness, “Hey! Don’t worry, nothing got stolen… I think,” the contrast in glee and thoughtfulness would have sent Lucía reeling had it been anyone other than her sister.

“But in any case, I sold the whole inventory! Look!” Luz presented a bulbous sack of coins, seemingly about to erupt at any moment if it were held the wrong way. Peering around the awry pouch, Lucía could tell from her little sister’s smile that she was fishing for some sort of compliment or acknowledgment.

Just before she could utter any sort of commendation, very much against the twisting feeling inside her stomach, Luz seemed to pop like the pouch from an exciting realization, “oh! I also traded that ratty baseball cap for a sweet hat! Hang on.”

She ducked out of sight beneath the covered table, quickly emerging with a comically wide-brimmed, conical white hat adorning her head. Jubilant as ever, Luz bubbled once more, “Just like the Good Witch Azura!”

Lucía’s cheeks burned as she pulled the brim over Luz’s eyes. “Hey!” she bleated, setting the hat back in place, “don’t be mad just because I’m cooler than you.” The burning in Lucia’s face intensified in irritation as she hissed, “and what exactly is wrong with my beanie, twerp?”

“Other than it being soaked, nothing I guess. Geez. I was just joking anyways,” Luz handed her sister the pouch of coins as she began to close up shop, shaking King awake who groaned, lazily brushing her hand away.

Luz threw a more earnest glance her sister's way, "What even happened? You look like last summer when I supersoakered you after work." The quiet giggle Luz let out did not help her sister's current state.

Lucía idly tried to wring out the dampness in her beanie, “I don't want to talk about it. Besides, you still haven't told me how you even sold everything off so quickly? I wasn’t gone for more than fifteen minutes.”

As she gathered up debris beneath the table, Luz simply stated, “It was 4 o’clock and the banking snakes were on their way home.”

Lucía recalled the group Luz was talking about, fifteen or so basilisks that worked at the bank just around the corner. They did walk by their stall often enough for her to remember but she couldn’t remember a single time they had bought anything. “And they just… bought the whole stand?”

“Yeah! I mean, it sort of turned into an auction I guess. They kept arguing with each other and a fight almost broke out at one point, but it worked out!”

Lucía watched Luz fold the tablecloth. What the hell did she do differently? She couldn’t fathom how her fourteen-year-old sister convinced a pit of snakes to buy an entire stall’s worth of human junk and the more she thought about it, the more of a headache she got.

As she packed up her guitar and some other trinkets that were left behind from the apparent rush, King slid off his makeshift throne of a ripped-up bath towel and crumpled paper to help Luz clean up. He added on, “It was funny too. One of them bought a shovel for two hundred snails.”

Lucía couldn’t hear King’s laughter as she froze, hand tightly gripping her guitar case. She’d finally connected the dots. Hesitantly, she began, “Luz?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you… lie about what was here?”

Luz thought to herself for a moment. Long enough to give Lucía the answer she’d feared.

“I mean, it was more like an omission of truth, ya know?”

King piped up once again, “No, she just lied. She said a bucket was a battle helmet only a human could see through.”

Without missing a beat, Luz shot back, “HEY! Lucía and I played with buckets on our heads all the time when we were kids! That wasn’t a complete lie.”

Their squabbling faded into the background as Lucía braced herself against the wall she’d been sitting at less than twenty minutes ago. She didn’t know why this was such a shock to her or why she cared so much about it. The past month had been hard on them and they obviously weren’t selling nearly as well as when Eda was running the business.

Still, the wave of uneasiness washed over her like a cold waterfall before she steeled herself and made up her mind. They probably had enough money for the next week so they could take a break from hawking. It would give Luz time to focus on her first days at school and Lucía could get a chance to try and figure out how to explain ethics and that lying to customers is poor practice.

Breaking up their argument, Lucía heaved her guitar case and turned around, “Well, we can head home early then. I’m sure Hooty is busy eating a colony of bugs or something. And since you guys did so well,” she tossed the coin pouch in her hand, “we’ll stop and get you both some crystal jelly.”

She couldn’t help but smile at the small celebration as Luz and King cheered. Lucía rolled her eyes, “Alright come on, I still gotta buy some tickets too, let’s go.”

Luz's enthusiasm plummeted as grimaced slightly, rubbing the back of her head, “uh… about that Luciana…” she looked towards King for help who didn’t notice, already heading down the street, humming blithely. “Willow sort of said she’d help me get ready for school the day of the concert and that she’s too busy for any other day this week…”

Lucía’s stomach dropped as she fumbled with the right words to say, “oh. Uh, alright.” She waited too long before continuing, “you’re sure?” The mental image of spending the day with her sister watching her favorite artist perform had been at the forefront of her mind for weeks. She never considered it wouldn’t come to fruition.

It was obvious this wasn’t easy for Luz either as she mustered up what she could with a pained expression, “Yeah, I wanted to talk to her about classes and tracks and everything,” she paused and looked like she was internally debating about something before continuing, “I also haven’t seen her in a while.”

Guilt started to worm its way up Lucía’s throat, trying to choke the air out of her. She realized Luz had been trying to help her out with the stand for quite a bit now, obviously taking away any opportunity to spend time with friends. “Yeah, of course. Not a problem” Lucía finally managed, instinctively trying to laugh for a breath of levity. Instead, it sounded like an apprehensive stifle.

Luz’ face betrayed a look of concern, “are you sure it’s alright? You said you were looking forward to it for a while.”

Lucía looked off down the street, trying her best to not give away any sort of melancholy or sadness. “Yeah manita, It’s all good. I didn’t want to make you feel like you were being dragged along anyway.” She summoned up a smile and rubbed her nose a bit as she turned to her little sister, “now come on, I don’t want to have to give Hooty the Heimlich Maneuver again.”

Picking up a couple of bags, the two sisters made their way down the street, catching up to King who was already well on his way to the crystal jelly cart. _Well, at least Luz won’t see me fangirl over Amelia Blight. I’d never hear the end of that._


End file.
